The Empire gained three hundred thousand settlers for the wastes of
the Gothic march, and a firm peace of more than thirty years with the
greatest of the northern nations.
the Gothic march, and a firm peace of more than thirty years with the
greatest of the northern nations.
Cambridge Medieval History - v1 - Christian Roman Empire and Teutonic Kingdoms
We note here the choice of Nicaea for its auspicious
name—the city of victory—and convenience of access; and we see in it
one of many signs that the true centre of the Empire was settling down
somewhere near the Bosphorus.
We need not closely analyse the imposing list of bishops present
from almost every province of the Empire, with a few from beyond its
frontiers in the far East and North. Legend made them 318, the holy
number (Tin) of the cross of Jesus. We have lists in sundry languages,
none of them giving more than 221 names; but these are known to be
incomplete. The actual number may have been near 300. All the
thirteen great dioceses of the Empire were represented except Britain
and Illyricum, though only single bishops came from Africa, Spain,
Gaul and Dacia. Only one came in person from Italy, though two
presbyters appeared for the bishop of Rome. So the vast majority came
from the Eastern provinces of the Empire. The outsiders were four or
five-Theophilus bishop of the Goths beyond the Danube, Cathirius
(the name is corrupt) of the Crimean Bosporus, John the Persian,
and Restaces the Armenian, the son of Gregory the Illuminator, with
perhaps another Armenian bishop. Eusebius is full of enthusiasm over
his majestic roll of churches far and near, from the extremity of Europe
to the furthest ends of Asia. It was a day of victory for both the
Empire and the Church. The Empire had not only made peace with
the stubbornest of its enemies, but been accepted as its protector and
guide. The Church had won the greatest of all its victories when
Galerius issued his edict of toleration : but its mission to the whole
world has never been so vividly embodied as by that august assembly.
CB. I.
## p. 14 (#44) ##############################################
14
The Council of Nicaea
[325
а
We miss half the meaning of the Council if we overlook the tremulous
hope and joy of those first years of worldwide victory. Athanasius
shows it even more than Eusebius. One thing at least was clear. The
new world faced the old, and the spell of the Holy Roman Empire had
already begun to work.
Constantine took up at once the position of a moderator. He began
by burning unread the budget of complaints against each other which
the bishops had presented to him. He then preached them a sermon on
a
unity; and unity was his text all through. He was much more anxious
to make the decisions unanimous than to influence them one way or
another. His one object was to make an end of division in the churches.
So whatever pleased the bishops pleased the emperor too. Easter was
fixed according to the custom of Rome and Alexandria for the Sunday
after the full moon following the vernal equinox. It is the rule we
have now, and though it did not produce complete unity till the lunar
cycle was quite settled, it secured that Easter should come after the
Passover, for, said Constantine, How can we who are Christians keep the
same day as those ungodly Jews? The Meletian schism was peacefully
settled—to the disgust of Athanasius in later years—by giving the
Meletian clergy a status next to the orthodox, with a right of succession
if found worthy. So far well : but the condemnation of Arianism may
have been something of a trial to Constantine, who could not quite see
why they thought it worth while to be so hot on such a trifling question
as the deity of Christ. However that may be, Arianism was politically
impossible. He must have known already from Hosius that the West
would not accept it, and the first act of the Council meant its almost
unanimous rejection by the East. As soon as there was no doubt what
the decision would be, he did his best to make it quite unanimous. All
the arts of imperial persuasion were tried on the waverers, till in the
end only two stubborn recusants remained to be sent into exile.
To some wider aspects of the Council we shall return hereafter. For
the moment it may be enough to say that Constantine had won a great
He had not only got his questions settled, but had himself
taken a conspicuous part in settling them. More than this. He had
established formal relations, no longer with bishops or groups of bishops,
but with a great confederacy of churches. The churches had long been
tending to organise themselves on the lines of the Empire, as we see in
Cyprian's theories; and now Constantine made the Church an alter ego
of the State, and gave it a concrete unity of the political sort which it
never had before. Henceforth the holy Catholic Church of the creeds was
more and more limited to the confederation of churches recognised by
the State, so that it only remained to compel all men to come into these,
and prevent the formation of any other religious communities. In this
way
the Church became much more useful to the State, and also perhaps
fitter to resist the shock of the barbarian conquests which followed; but
success.
## p. 15 (#45) ##############################################
315–326]
Crispus and Fausta
15
surely something was lost in freedom and spirituality, and therefore also
in practical morality.
We
pass
from the Council of Nicaea to a family tragedy. So far
Constantine may pass as fairly merciful to the plotters of his own house.
Maximian, Bassianus and Licinius had all tried to assassinate him; and
if he put to death Bassianus (see p. 8), he had spared Maximian till he
plotted again, and so far he had spared Licinius also. But now in a few
months from Oct. 325 he puts to death not only Licinius but his own son
Crispus and the younger Licinius, then his own wife Fausta, and then a
number of his friends. The facts are certain, but their exact meaning is
obscure. It must however be noticed that the dynastic policy of Diocletian
had given a new political importance to members of an imperial family.
The widows of the third century emperors fall into obscurity ; but the
widow of Galerius is first sought in marriage by Maximin Daza, then
executed by Licinius, who also put to death the children of Severus,
Daza and Galerius. Now Constantine married twice; and there may
well have been a bitter division in his family. Minervina was the
mother of Crispus, whom we have seen greatly distinguishing himself
in the war with Licinius : and there seems no serious doubt that the
three younger sons were children of Fausta, though the eldest of them
was not born till 315-6, eight years after her marriage. So we come to
the questions we cannot answer. Was Constantine jealous of his eldest
son, or anxious to get him out of the way of the others ? Or was Crispus
a plotter justly put to death? And how came Fausta to share his fate
a little later? They are not likely to have been accomplices in a plot
or connected by a guilty passion, though the story of Zosimus is not
impossible, that she accused him falsely, and was herself put to death
for it when Helena convicted her. We have not material enough for
any decided opinion. The worst point, it may be, against Constantine
is that he did not spare the young Licinius. If he was the son of
Constantia, he cannot have been more than twelve years old. But the
allusions to him suggest that he was something more than a boy, and
we know that Constantia was on the best of terms with her brother
when she died a couple of years later. If Constantine suspected the
elder Licinius, the new sultanism would involve the younger in his fate ;
and if Crispus had married Helena his daughter, suspicion might attach
to him too. Fausta's fate is the inystery. Or was Constantine more or
less out of his mind that winter, as despots occasionally are? One or
two of his laws may point that way, and the possibility may help to
explain a good deal.
Constantine kept his Vicennalia at Rome in the summer of 326. It
was an unhappy visit, even if the domestic tragedy had already taken
place. Rome was the focus of heathenism, and of Roman pride. She
expected to see her sovereigns at the ceremonies, and to treat them with
something of republican familiarity. Constantine scandalised her with
1
.
重
1
H
CH. I,
## p. 16 (#46) ##############################################
16
The site of Constantinople
[326
his Eastern pomp, and gave deep offence to the senate and people by
refusing to join the immemorial procession of the knights of Rome to
the Capitol. When he left the city in September, he left it for ever.
Rome indeed had long ceased to be a good capital. It was too far
from the frontier for military purposes, too full of republican survivals
for such sultans as the emperors had now become, too heathen for
Christian Caesars. So Maximian held his court at Milan, while Dio-
cletian gradually shifted his chief resort eastward from Sirmium to
Nicomedia. There were many signs now that the seat of empire ought
to be somewhere near the Bosphorus. The chief dangers had always
come from the Danube and the Euphrates; and about the Bosphorus
was the only point which commanded both. If these were watched by
the emperor himself, the Rhine might be left in charge of a Caesar.
This was much the best course for the present; but in the long run the
problem was insoluble. The Rhine and the Danube might be guarded,
or the Danube and the Euphrates ; but now that Rome had failed to
make a solid nation of her empire, she could not permanently guard all
three together. Sooner or later it must come to a choice between the
Rhine and the Euphrates, between Italy and Greece, between Europe
and Asia. Constantine is not likely to have seen clearly all this ; but
he did see that he commanded more important countries from the
Bosphorus than he could from Rome or Milan. These might control the
Latin West and the upper Danube ; but at the Bosphorus he had at
his feet the Greek world from Taurus to the Balkans, flanked northward
by the warlike peoples of Illyricum, and eastward by the great barbarian
fringe of Egypt, Syria and Armenia, reaching from the Caucasus to the
cataracts of the Nile. Nobody could yet foresee that by the seventh
century nothing but the Greek world would be left. But where pre-
cisely was the new capital to be placed ? Nicomedia would have been
Diocletian's city, not Constantine's, and in any case it lay at the far end
of a gulf, some fifty miles from the main line of traffic. Constantine
may at one time have dreamed of his own birthplace Naissus, or of
Sardica, and at another he began buildings on the site of Troy, before
he fixed upon the matchless position of Byzantium,
Europe and Asia are separated by the broad expanses of the Euxine
and Aegean seas, together stretching nearly a thousand miles from the
Crimea to the mountains of Crete, and in ancient times almost fringed
round with Greek cities. It is not all a land of the vine and the olive,
even in Aegean waters, for the Russian wind sweeps over the whole
region except in sheltered parts, as where Trebizond is protected by the
Caucasus, Philippi by the Rhodope, or Sparta by Taygetus, or where
Ionia hides behind the Mysian Olympus and the Trojan Ida. For all
its heat in summer, Constantinople is quite as cold in winter as London,
and the western ports of the Black Sea are more cumbered with ice than
the north of Norway. But the Aegean and the Euxine are not a single
## p. 17 (#47) ##############################################
B. C. 674-A. D. 323]
Byzantium
17
a
broad sheet of water. In the narrows between them the coasts of
Europe and Asia draw so close together that we can sail for more than
two hundred miles in full view of both continents. Leaving the warm
South behind at Lesbos (Mitylene) we pass from the Aegean to the
Propontis (Marmora) by the Hellespont (Dardanelles) a channel of
some fifty miles in length to Gallipoli, and two or three miles broad.
Then a voyage of a hundred and forty miles through the more open
waters of the Propontis brings us to the Bosphorus, which averages only
three-quarters of a mile wide, and has a winding course of sixteen miles
from Byzantium to the Cyanean rocks at the entrance of the Euxine.
It follows that a city on the Propontis is protected north and south by
the narrow passages of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and that all
traffic between the Aegean and the Euxine must pass its walls. More-
over, the Bosphorus lay more conveniently than the Dardanelles for the
passage from Europe to Asia. Thus two of the chief trade-routes of the
Roman world crossed each other at Byzantium.
The Megarians may have had some idea of these things when they
colonised Chalcedon (B. C. 674) just outside the south end of the Bosphorus,
on the Asiatic side of the Propontis. But the site of Chalcedon has no
special advantages, so that its founders became a proverb of blindness for
overlooking the superb position of Byzantium across the water, which was
not occupied till B. c. 657. At the south end of the Bosphorus, but on
the European side, a blunt triangle is formed by the Propontis and the
Golden Horn, a deep inlet of the Bosphorus running seven miles to the
north-west. On the rising ground between them was built the city of
Byzantium. Small as its extent was in Greek times, it played a great
part in history. Its command of the corn trade of the Euxine made it
one of the most important strategic positions in the Greek world, so
that its capture by Alexander (it had repulsed Philip) was one of the
chief steps of his advance to empire. It formed an early alliance with
the Romans, who freed it from its perpetual trouble with the barbarians
of Thrace, whom neither peace nor war could keep quiet. Vespasian
(A. D. 73) took away its privileges and threw it into the province of
Thrace. In the civil wars of Septimius Severus it took the side of
Pescennius Niger, and held out for two years after Niger's overthrow at
Issus in 194. Severus destroyed its walls, and made it a subject-village
of Perinthus. Caracalla made it a city again, but it was sacked afresh
by Gallienus. Meanwhile the Gothic vikings came sailing past its ruined
walls to spread terror all over the Aegean and to the shores of Italy.
Under the Ilyrian emperors it was fortified again. Even then it was
taken first by Maximin Daza and then by Constantine in the first Licinian
war, so that its full significance only came out in the second. Licinius
was a good general, and pivoted the whole war upon it after his defeat at
Hadrianople. He might have held his ground indefinitely, if the destruc-
tion of his fleet in the Hellespont had not driven him from Byzantium.
2
C. MED. H. VOL. I. CH. I.
## p. 18 (#48) ##############################################
18
Constantinople
[ 330-1204
The lesson was not lost on Constantine. He began the work some
time after his visit to Rome, and pushed it forward with impatience,
He traced his walls to form a base two and a half miles from the apex
of the triangle. Byzantium stood on a single hill, but he took in five,
and his successors counted seven, according to the number of the hills of
Rome. The market-place was on the second hill, where his camp had
been during the siege. He erected great buildings, and gathered works
of art from all parts to adorn it. The temples of Byzantium remained,
though they were overshadowed by the great cathedral of the Twelve
Apostles. Some heathen ceremonies also were used, for Constantinople
was the last and greatest colony of Rome, and for centuries retained the
flavour of a Latin city. He gave it a senate also, and brought over
many
of the senators of Rome to be senators of the New Rome-for such
was its official title, though it has always been known as the City of
Constantine. The Northmen called it simply Miklagard, the Great
City. It never had much in the way of amphitheatre or beast-fights:
amusement more Christian and humane was provided by a circus and
horse-races. Its corn largesses were like those of Rome, and the corn of
Egypt was diverted to its use, leaving that of Sicily and Africa for Rome.
The New Rome stood next to the Old in rank and dignity, being
separated from the province of Europa, and governed by proconsuls till
it received a Praefectus Urbi like Rome in 359. The bishop also soon
shook off his dependence on Perinthus, and was recognised as standing
next to the bishop of Rome, “ because Constantinople is New Rome," by
the Council of 381. This ousted Alexandria from the second place, and
the jealousy thereupon arising had important ecclesiastical consequences,
The work was complete, so far as the hasty building would allow, by
the spring of 330: and 11 May of that year is the official date for
the foundation of Constantinople.
It would be hard to overestimate the strength given to the Empire
by the new capital. So long as the Romans held the sea, the city was
impregnable. If it was attacked on one side, it could draw supplies
from the other; and when it was attacked on both sides in 628, Persians
and Avars could not join hands across the Bosphorus. Even when the
command of the sea was lost, it still remained a fortress of uncommon
strength. So stood Constantinople for more than a thousand years.
Goths and Avars, Persians and Saracens, Bulgarians and Russians,
dashed in vain upon its walls, and even the Turks failed more than
It was often enough taken in civil war by help from within ;
but no foreign enemy ever stormed its walls till the Fourth Crusade
(A. D. 1204). The Arian controversy first made it clear that the heart
of the Empire was in the Greek world, or more precisely in Asiatic
Greece between the Taurus and the Bosphorus; and of the Greek world
Constantinople was the natural capital. It did not however at once
1 The city will be described in Vol. iv. Ch. xx.
once.
## p. 19 (#49) ##############################################
331–1281]
The Gothic War
19
become the regular residence of the emperors. Constantine himself
died in a suburb of Nicomedia, Constantius led a wandering life, Jovian
never reached the city, and Valens in his later years avoided it. Theo-
dosius was the first emperor who made it his usual residence. But the
commercial supremacy of Constantinople was assured from the outset.
The centre of gravity of Asia Minor had shifted northward since the
first century, and the Bosphorus gave an easier passage to Europe than
the Aegean. So the roads which had converged on Ephesus now con-
verged on Constantinople. It dominated the Greek world; and the
Greek world was the solid part of the Empire which resisted all attacks
for ages. The loss was more apparent than real when first the Slavic
lands were torn away, then Syria and Egypt, and lastly Sicily and Italy.
The Empire was never struck in a vital part till the Seljuks rooted out
Greek civilisation from the highland of Asia Minor in the eleventh
century. Even after that it was still a conquering power under the
Comnenians and the house of Lascaris; and its fate was never hopeless
till its last firm ground in Asia was destroyed by the corrupt and selfish
policy of Michael Palaeologus.
We know little of Constantine's declining years, except that they
were generally years of peace. The civil wars were ended at Chrysopolis :
now there was not even a pretender, unless we count as such Calocerus
the camel-driver in Cyprus, who was put down without much difficulty,
and duly burned in the market-place of Tarsus (335). If the Rhine was
not entirely quiet, the troubles there were not serious. The Jews, to be
sure, were never loyal, and the Christian Empire had already shown
marked hostility to them. A rising mentioned only by Chrysostom is
most likely a legend: but there may have been already some signs of
the great outbreak put down by Ursicinus in 352. However, upon the
whole there was peace. The old emperor never again took the field in
person.
His last war was with the Goths; and that was conducted by
the younger Constantine.
On
broad view, the legions of the Danube faced the Germans in
course and the Goths lower down, with the Sarmatians between
them; and each of these names stands for sundry tribes and groups of
tribes
, whose mutual enmities were diligently fostered by the policy of
Rome. In 331 the Sarmatians and the Vandals had somehow got mixed
up together, and suffered a great defeat from the Goths. They asked
Constantine for help, and he was very willing to check the growth of the
Gothic power. Araric the Gothic king replied by carrying the war into
the Roman province of Moesia, from which he was driven out with
heavy loss. The younger Constantine gained a great victory over him,
20 April 332 ; and when peace was made, the Goths returned to their
position as servants and allies of Rome. But when the Sarmatians
themselves made inroads on Roman territory, Constantine left them to
They were soon in difficulties with Geberic the new Gothic
a
its
upper
old
their fate.
CH, I.
242
## p. 20 (#50) ##############################################
20
The last years of Constantine
[284–988
king, and with their own slaves the Limigantes, who drove them out of
their country. Some fled to the Quadi, some found refuge among the
Gothic tribes, but 300,000 of them sought shelter in the Empire, and
were given lands by Constantine, chiefly in Pannonia.
The most interesting circumstance of the Gothic war is the help
which Constantine received from Cherson, the last of the Greek re-
publics. It stood where Sebastopol now stands. The story is told only
by Constantine Porphyrogenitus (911-959), but the learned emperor
was an excellent antiquarian, and used original authorities. Cherson
and the Goths were old enemies, Rome and Cherson old allies. The
republic decided for war, and its first magistrate Diogenes struck a
decisive blow by attacking the rear of the Goths. Cherson received
a rich reward from Constantine, and remained in generally friendly
relations to the Empire till its annexation in 829, and even till its
capture by the Russians in 988.
The settlement of the Danube was the last of Constantine's great
services to the Empire. The Edict of Milan had removed the standing
danger of Christian disaffection in the East, the defeat of Licinius had
put an end to the civil wars, the reform of the administration completed
Diocletian's work of reducing the army to permanent obedience, the
Council of Nicaea had secured the active alliance of the Christian
churches, the foundation of Constantinople made the seat of power
safe for centuries; and now the consolidation of the northern frontier
seemed to enlist all the most dangerous enemies of Rome in her defence.
The Empire gained three hundred thousand settlers for the wastes of
the Gothic march, and a firm peace of more than thirty years with the
greatest of the northern nations. Henceforth the Rhine was guarded
by the Franks, the Danube covered by the Goths, and the Euphrates
flanked by the Christian kingdom of Armenia. The Empire was already
dangerously dependent on barbarian help inside and outside its frontiers ;
but the Roman peace never seemed more secure than when the skilful
policy of Constantine had formed its chief barbarian enemies into a
covering ring of friendly client states.
At all events, the years of peace were not a time of healthful
recovery. The Empire had not gained strength in the long peace of
the Antonines ; and it had gone a long way downhill since the second
century. When Diocletian came to the throne in 284, he found three
great problems before him. The first was military-how to stop the
continual mutinies which cut off the emperors before they could do their
work. This he solved, though at the cost of leaving behind him a period
of civil war. The second was religious—how to deal with the Christians.
Diocletian went wrong on this, and left his mistake to be repaired by
Constantine. The third and hardest was mainly economic-to restore
the dwindled agriculture, commerce and population of the Empire. On
this Diocletian and Constantine went wrong together. They not only
## p. 21 (#51) ##############################################
325–337]
The later years of Constantine
21
failed to cure the evil, but greatly increased it. Not much was gained
by remitting taxes that could not be paid, and settling barbarian
colonists and barbarian serfs in the wasted provinces. Serious economic
difficulties have moral causes, and there was no radical cure short of a
complete change in the temper of society. Yet much might have been
done by a permanent reduction of taxation and a reform of its incidence
and of the methods of collection. Instead of this, the machinery of
government (and its expense) was greatly increased. The army had to
be held in check by courts of Oriental splendour and a vast establish-
ment of corrupt officials. We can see the growth of officialism even in the
language, if we compare the Latin words in Athanasius with those in the
New Testament. So heavier taxes had to be levied from a smaller and
poorer population. Taxation under the Empire had never been light; in
the third century it grew heavy, under Diocletian it was crushing, and
in the later years of Constantine the burden was further increased by the
enormous expenditure which built up the new capital like the city in a
fairy tale. We are within sight of the time when the whole policy of
the government was dictated by dire financial need. We have already
reached a state of things like that we see in Russia. The strongest of
the emperors had never been able to put down brigandage; and now
disorder was rampant in the mountains, and often elsewhere. The great
army of officials was all-powerful for oppression, and very little con-
trolled by the emperor. He might displace an official at a moment's
notice, or “deliver him to the avenging flames”; but he could enforce
no reform against the passive resistance of the officials and the land-
So things drifted on from bad to worse.
Nor can we doubt that Constantine himself
grew
slacker in the
years
of peace. Nature had richly gifted him with sound health, strong
limbs, and a stately presence. His energy was untiring, his observation
keen, his decision quick. He was a splendid soldier, and the best general
since Aurelian. If he had no learned education, he was not without
interest in literature, and in practical statesmanship he may fairly rank
with Diocletian. His general humanity stands out clear in his laws, for
no emperor ever did more for the slave, the foundling and the oppressed.
If he began by giving the Frankish kings to the beasts, he went on (325)
to forbid the games of the amphitheatre. In private life he was chaste
and sober, moderate and pleasant. Yet he was given to raillery, and
his nearest friends could not entirely trust him. His ambition was
great, and he was very susceptible to flattery. So freely was it
ministered to him that he sometimes had to check it himself: but
in his later years he was more or less influenced by unworthy favourites,
as Ablabius and Sopater seem to have been. No doubt his Christianity
is of itself an offence to Zosimus and Julian, so that we may discount
their charges of sloth and luxury: but upon the whole, the judgment of
Eutropius would seem impartial, that Constantine was a match for the
owners.
CH. I.
## p. 22 (#52) ##############################################
22 Constantine's disposition of the Empire [217–380
best emperors in the early part of his reign, and at its end no more than
average.
As Constantine had won the Empire, so now he had to dispose of it.
Constantine, Constantius and Constans, his three sons by Fausta, were
born in 316, 317, 320, and received the title of Caesar in 317, 323, 333.
In 335 their inheritance was marked out. Constantine was to have the
Gaulish prefecture, Constantius the Eastern, Constans the Italian and
Illyrian. This is the partition actually made after the emperor's death ;
but for the present it was complicated by some obscure transactions.
Constantine had made honourable provision for his half-brothers Del-
matius and Julius Constantius, the sons of Theodora, and they never
gave him political trouble. Of their sisters, he married Constantia to
Licinius, Anastasia to Bassianus and Nepotianus, of whom the second
certainly was a great Roman noble, so that they too suffered no dis-
paragement. Basilina also, the wife of Julius Constantius and mother
of the emperor Julian, belonged to the great Anician family. Now
Delmatius left two sons, Delmatius and Hanniballianus. Of these
Delmatius must have been a man of mark, for he held the high office
of magister militum, and was made Caesar in 335, while Hanniballianus
was the husband of Constantine's daughter Constantina. But they had
no proper claim to any share in the succession, and we do not know why
they were given it. There may have been parties in the palace; and if
so, Ablabius is likely to have had a share in the matter, for he was put
to death along with them in the massacre which followed Constantine's
death. Certain it is that shares were carved out for them from the
inheritance of their cousins. Delmatius was to have the Gothic march,
while Hanniballianus received Pontus, with the astonishing title of
rex regum—for no Roman since the Tarquins had ever borne the name
of king.
The strange title may point to some design upon Armenia, for the
whole Eastern Question of the day was raised when Persia threatened
war. Four emperors in the third century had met with disaster on the
Persian frontier, but there had been forty years of peace since the victory
of Galerius in 297. The Empire gained Mesopotamia to the Aboras,
and the five provinces which covered the southern slopes of the Armenian
mountains; and in Armenia itself, Roman supremacy was fully recog-
nised by its great king Tiridates (287–314). If his adoption of
Christianity led to a short war with Maximin Daza, it only drew
Armenia closer to Constantine. But if the royal house was Christian
and leaned on Rome, there was a large heathen party which looked to
Persia : and Persia was an aggressive power under Sapor II (309_380).
A vigorous persecution of Christians was carried on, and war with Rome
was only a question of time. Sapor demanded back the five provinces
and attacked Mesopotamia, while a revolution in the palace threw
Armenia into his hands.
## p. 23 (#53) ##############################################
337]
Death of Constantine
23
How much of this was done during Constantine's lifetime is more
than we can say: but at all events a Persian war was plain in sight by
the spring of 337; and a war with Persia was too serious a matter to be
left to Caesars like a Frankish foray or a Gothic inroad, so the old
emperor prepared to take the field in person. He never set out. Con-
stantine fell sick soon after Easter, and when the sickness grew upon
him, he took up his abode at Ancyrona, a suburb of Nicomedia. As
his end drew near, he received the imposition of hands, for up to that
time he had not been even a catechumen. He then applied for baptism,
explaining that he had hoped some day to receive it in the waters of the
Jordan like the Lord himself. After the ceremony he laid aside the
purple, and passed away in stainless white (22 May 337). As all his
sons were absent, the government was carried on for three months in the
dead emperor's name, till they had made their arrangements, and the
soldiers had slaughtered almost the entire house of Theodora. Con-
stantine was buried on the spot he had himself marked out in the
cathedral of the Twelve Apostles in his own imperial city. The Greek
Church still calls him loanótolosan equal of the Apostles.
CH. I.
## p. 24 (#54) ##############################################
24
CHAPTER II.
THE REORGANISATION OF THE EMPIRE.
It is natural to think of Diocletian as the projector and of Constantine
as the completer of a new system of government for the Roman Empire,
which persisted with mere changes of detail until it was laid in ruins by
the barbarians. But in reality the imperial institutions from the time of
Augustus onwards had passed through a course of continuous develop-
ment. Diocletian did but accelerate processes which had been in
operation from the Empire's earliest days, and Constantine left much
for his successors to accomplish. Still these two great organisers did so
far change the world which they ruled as to be rightly styled the founders
of a new type of monarchy. We will first sketch rapidly the most striking
aspects of this altered world, and then consider them one by one some-
what more closely. But our survey must be in the main of a general
character, and many details, especially when open to doubt, must be
passed over. In particular, the minutiae of chronology, which in this
region of history are specially difficult to determine, must often be
disregarded.
The ideal of a balance of power between the Princeps and the Senate,
which Augustus dangled before the eyes of his contemporaries, was never
approached in practice. From the first the imperial constitution bore
within it the seed of autocracy, and the plant was not of slow growth.
The historian Tacitus was not far wrong when he described Augustus as
having drawn to himself all the functions which in the Republic had
belonged to magistrates and to laws. The founder of the Empire had
studied well the art of concealing his political art, but the pressure of his
hand was felt in every corner of the administration. Each princeps was
as far above law as he chose to rise, so long as he did not strain the
endurance of the Senate and people to the point of breaking. When
that point was passed there was the poor consolation of refusing him his
apotheosis, or of branding with infamy his memory. As the possibility
of imperial interference was ever present in every section of the vast
machine of government, all concerned in its working were anxious to
secure themselves by obtaining an order from above. This anxiety is
conspicuous in the letters written by Pliny to his master Trajan. Even
## p. 25 (#55) ##############################################
The tendency to Despotism
25
those emperors who were most citizen-like (civiles as the phrase went)
were carried away by the tide. Tacitus exhibits the Senate as eagerly
pressing Tiberius to permit the enlargement of his powers—Tiberius
who regarded every precept of Augustus as a law for himself. The
so-called lex regia Vespasiani shews how constantly the admitted
authority of the emperor advanced by the accumulation of precedents.
Pliny gave Trajan credit for having reconciled the Empire with “liberty”;
but “liberty” had come to mean little more than orderly and benevolent
administration, free from cruel caprice, with some external deference paid
to the Senate. Developed custom made the rule of Marcus Aurelius
greatly more despotic than that of Augustus. Even the emperors of the
third century who, like Severus Alexander, made most of the Senate,
could not turn back the current. It was long, however, before the subjects
of the Empire realised that the ancient glory had departed. Down to
the time of the Emperor Tacitus pretenders found their account in posing
as senatorial champions, and rulers used the Senate's name as a con-
venient screen for their crimes. But the natural outcome of the anarchy
of the third century was the unveiled despotism of Diocletian. He was the
last in a line of valiant soldiers sprung from Illyrian soil, who accomplished
the rescue of Rome from the dissolution with which it had been threatened
by forces without and by forces within. To him more than to Aurelian,
on whom it was bestowed, belonged by right the title “restorer of the
world. ” For three centuries the legions had been a standing menace to
the very existence of Graeco-Roman civilisation. They made emperors
and unmade them, and devoured the substance of the State, exacting
continually lavish largess at the sword's point. One hope of Diocletian
when, following in the steps of Aurelian, he hedged round the throne with
pomp and majesty, was that a new awe might shield the civil power
from the lawless soldiery. In place of an Augustus, loving to parade as
a bourgeois leader of the people, there comes a kind of Sultan, with
trappings such as the men of the West had been used to associate with
the servile East, with the Persians and Parthians. The ruler of the
Roman world wears the oriental diadem, the mere dread of which had
brought Caesar to his end. He is approached as a living god with that
adoration from which the souls of the Greeks revolted when they came
into the presence of the Great King, though Alexander bent them to
endure it. Eunuchs are among his greatest officers. Lawyers buttress
his throne with an absolutist theory of the constitution which is
universally accepted.
From Augustus to Diocletian the trend of the government towards
centralisation had been incessant. The new monarchy gave to the
centralisation an intensity and an elaboration unknown before. In the
early days of conquest, whether within Italy or beyond its boundaries,
the Roman power had attempted no unification of its dominions. As
rulers, the Romans had shewn themselves thorough opportunists. They
CH. II.
## p. 26 (#56) ##############################################
26
The growth of Centrulisation
tolerated great varieties of local privilege and partial liberty. Their
government had followed, almost timidly, the line of least resistance, and
had adapted itself to circumstance, to usage, and to prejudice in every
part of the Empire. Even taxation had been elastic. Before the
age
of
despotism, few matters had ever been regulated by one unvarying
enactment for every province. To this great policy the Romans chiefly
owed the rapidity of their successes and the security of their ascendency.
The tendency towards unity was of course manifest from the first. But
it sprang far less from the direct action of the central government than
from the instinctive and unparalleled attraction which the Roman institu-
tions possessed for the provincials, particularly in the West. In part by
the extension of Roman and Italian rights to the provinces, in part
by the gradual depression of Italy to the level of a province, and in part
by interference designed to correct misgovernment, local differences were
to a great extent effaced. Septimius Severus by stationing a legion in
Italy removed one chief distinction between that favoured land and the
subject regions outside. Under his successor, Caracalla, all communities
within the Empire became alike Roman. By Diocletian and by Con-
stantine, control from the centre was made systematic and organic. Yet
absolute uniformity was not attained. In taxation, in legal administra-
tion, and in some other departments of government, local conditions
still induced some toleration of diversities.
Centralisation brought into existence with its growth a vast bureau-
cracy. The organisation of the Imperial side of the administration, as
opposed to the Senatorial, became more and more complex, while the
importance of the Senate in the administrative machinery continually
lessened. The expansion and organisation of the executive engaged the
attention of many emperors, particularly Claudius, Vespasian, Trajan,
Hadrian, and Septimius Severus. When the chaos of the third century
had been overcome, Diocletian and his successors were compelled to
reconstruct the whole service of the Empire, and a great network of
officials, bearing for the most part new titles and largely undertaking
new functions, was spread over it.
Along with the development of absolutism and the extension of
bureaucracy, and the unification of administration had gone certain
tendencies which had cut deeply into the constitution of society at large.
The boundaries between class and class tended more and more to become
fixed and impassable. As the Empire decayed society stiffened, and some
approximations were made to the oriental institution of caste. Augustus
had tried to give a rigid organisation to the circle from which senators
were drawn, and had constituted it as an order of nobility passing down
from father to son, only to be slowly recruited by imperial choice.
Many duties owed to the State tended to become hereditary, and it was
made difficult for men to rid themselves of the status which they acquired
at birth. The exigencies of finance made membership of the local
## p. 27 (#57) ##############################################
The new form of the Executive Government
27
a
senates in the municipalities almost impossible to escape. The frontier
legions, partly by encouragement and partly by ordinance, were largely
filled with sons of the camp. Several causes, the chief of which was the
financial system, gave rise to a kind of serfdom (colonatus) which at first
attached the cultivators of the soil, and as time went on, approximated
to a condition of actual slavery. The provisioning of the great capitals,
Rome and Constantinople, and the transportation of goods on public
account, rendered occupations connected with them hereditary. And
many inequalities between classes became pronounced. The criminal
law placed the honestiores and the tenuiores in different categories.
The main features of the executive government as organised by
Diocletian and his successors, must now be briefly described. For the
first time the difference between the prevalently Latin West and the pre-
valently Greek East was clearly reflected in the scheme of administration.
Diocletian ordained (286) that two Augusti with equal authority should
share the supreme power, one making his residence in the Eastern, the
other in the Western portion. The Empire was not formally divided
between them; they were to work together for the benefit of the whole
State. This association of Augusti was not exactly new; but it had
never been before formalised so completely. The separation of West
from East had been foreshadowed from the early days of the Empire.
In the first century it had been found necessary to have a Greek
Secretary of State (a libellis Graecis) as well as a Latin Secretary (a
libellis Latinis). The civilisation of the two spheres, in spite of much
interaction, remained markedly different. The municipal life of the
Eastern regions in which Greek influence predominated was fixed in its
characteristics before the Romans acquired their ascendency, and the
impression they made on it was not on the whole great. But they
spread their own municipal institutions all over Western lands.
Although Diocletian's arrangement of the two Augusti was
thrown by Constantine, the inherent incompatibility between the two
sections of the Empire continued to assert itself, and the separation
became permanent in fact if not in form on the death of Theodosius.
The establishment of Constantinople as the capital rendered the ultimate
severance inevitable. Another problem which Diocletian attacked was
that of the succession to the throne. Each “ Augustus " was to have
assigned to him (293) a “Caesar” who would assist him in the task of
government and succeed him on his retirement or death. The trans-
ference of power would thus be peaceful and the violent revolutions caused
by the claims of the legions to nominate emperors would cease. But in the
nature of things this device could not prosper. The Empire followed the
course it had taken from the beginning. The dynastic principle strove
time after time to establish itself, but dynasties were ever threatened with
catastrophe, such as had ensued on the deaths of Nero, of Commodus,
and of Severus Alexander. But new emperors frequently did homage to
over-
CH. 11.
## p. 28 (#58) ##############################################
28
Personal authority of the Emperor
9
29
heredity by a process of posthumous and fictitious adoption, whereby
they grafted themselves on to the line of their predecessors. Apparently
even this phantom of legitimacy had some value for the effect it produced
on the public mind.
The theory of government now became, as has been said, frankly
autocratic. Even Aurelian, a man of simple and soldierly life, had
thought well to take to himself officially the title of " lord and god”
which private flattery had bestowed upon Domitian. The lawyers
established a fiction that the Roman people had voluntarily resigned
all authority into the hands of the monarch. The fable was as baseless
and as serviceable as that of the “social compact,” received in the
eighteenth century. No person or class held any rights against the
emperor. The revenues were his private property. All payments from
the treasury were “sacred largesses” conceded by the divine ruler. So
far as the State was concerned, the distinction between the senatorial
exchequer (aerarium) and the imperial exchequer (fiscus) disappeared.
Certain revenues, as for instance those derived from the confiscated
estates of unsuccessful pretenders, were labelled as the emperor's private
property (res privata), and others as belonging to his “family estate
(patrimonium). But these designations were merely formal and ad-
ministrative. The emperor was the sole ultimate source of all law and
authority. The personnel by which he was immediately surrounded in
his capital was of vast extent, and the palace was often a hotbed of
intrigue. Even in the time of the Severi the “Caesareans ” (Kawoápeloi)
as Dio Cassius names them, were numerous enough to imperil often the
public peace. Another class of imperial servants, the workers at the
mint, had, in the reign of Aurelian, raised an insurrection which led to a
shedding of blood in Rome such as had not been witnessed since the age
of Sulla. The military basis of imperial power, partly concealed by the
earlier emperors, stood fully revealed. Septimius Severus had been the
first to wear regularly in the capital the full insignia of military
command, previously seen there only on days of triumph. Now every
department of the public service was regarded as “militia,” and “ camp
(castra) is the official name for the court. All high officers, with the
exception of the praefectus urbi, wore the military garb. It is needless
to say that officials who were nominally the emperor's domestic servants
easily gathered power into their own hands and often became the real
rulers of the Empire. The line between domestic offices and those which
were political and military was never strictly drawn. All higher functions
whose exercise required close attention on the emperor's person were
covered by the description dignitates palatinae. Under the early
emperors the great ministers of state were largely freedmen, whose
status was rather that of court servants than of public administrators.
The great departments of the imperial service were gradually freed from
their close attachment to the emperor's person. The natural result was
## p. 29 (#59) ##############################################
Officers attached to the Emperor's person
29
that direct personal influence over the ruler often passed into the hands
of men whose duties were in name connected only with the daily life of
the palace. From the third century onwards the Eastern custom of
choosing eunuchs as the most trusted servants prevailed in the imperial
household as in the private households of the wealthy. The greatest of
these was the praepositus sacri cubiculi. or Great Chamberlain.
name—the city of victory—and convenience of access; and we see in it
one of many signs that the true centre of the Empire was settling down
somewhere near the Bosphorus.
We need not closely analyse the imposing list of bishops present
from almost every province of the Empire, with a few from beyond its
frontiers in the far East and North. Legend made them 318, the holy
number (Tin) of the cross of Jesus. We have lists in sundry languages,
none of them giving more than 221 names; but these are known to be
incomplete. The actual number may have been near 300. All the
thirteen great dioceses of the Empire were represented except Britain
and Illyricum, though only single bishops came from Africa, Spain,
Gaul and Dacia. Only one came in person from Italy, though two
presbyters appeared for the bishop of Rome. So the vast majority came
from the Eastern provinces of the Empire. The outsiders were four or
five-Theophilus bishop of the Goths beyond the Danube, Cathirius
(the name is corrupt) of the Crimean Bosporus, John the Persian,
and Restaces the Armenian, the son of Gregory the Illuminator, with
perhaps another Armenian bishop. Eusebius is full of enthusiasm over
his majestic roll of churches far and near, from the extremity of Europe
to the furthest ends of Asia. It was a day of victory for both the
Empire and the Church. The Empire had not only made peace with
the stubbornest of its enemies, but been accepted as its protector and
guide. The Church had won the greatest of all its victories when
Galerius issued his edict of toleration : but its mission to the whole
world has never been so vividly embodied as by that august assembly.
CB. I.
## p. 14 (#44) ##############################################
14
The Council of Nicaea
[325
а
We miss half the meaning of the Council if we overlook the tremulous
hope and joy of those first years of worldwide victory. Athanasius
shows it even more than Eusebius. One thing at least was clear. The
new world faced the old, and the spell of the Holy Roman Empire had
already begun to work.
Constantine took up at once the position of a moderator. He began
by burning unread the budget of complaints against each other which
the bishops had presented to him. He then preached them a sermon on
a
unity; and unity was his text all through. He was much more anxious
to make the decisions unanimous than to influence them one way or
another. His one object was to make an end of division in the churches.
So whatever pleased the bishops pleased the emperor too. Easter was
fixed according to the custom of Rome and Alexandria for the Sunday
after the full moon following the vernal equinox. It is the rule we
have now, and though it did not produce complete unity till the lunar
cycle was quite settled, it secured that Easter should come after the
Passover, for, said Constantine, How can we who are Christians keep the
same day as those ungodly Jews? The Meletian schism was peacefully
settled—to the disgust of Athanasius in later years—by giving the
Meletian clergy a status next to the orthodox, with a right of succession
if found worthy. So far well : but the condemnation of Arianism may
have been something of a trial to Constantine, who could not quite see
why they thought it worth while to be so hot on such a trifling question
as the deity of Christ. However that may be, Arianism was politically
impossible. He must have known already from Hosius that the West
would not accept it, and the first act of the Council meant its almost
unanimous rejection by the East. As soon as there was no doubt what
the decision would be, he did his best to make it quite unanimous. All
the arts of imperial persuasion were tried on the waverers, till in the
end only two stubborn recusants remained to be sent into exile.
To some wider aspects of the Council we shall return hereafter. For
the moment it may be enough to say that Constantine had won a great
He had not only got his questions settled, but had himself
taken a conspicuous part in settling them. More than this. He had
established formal relations, no longer with bishops or groups of bishops,
but with a great confederacy of churches. The churches had long been
tending to organise themselves on the lines of the Empire, as we see in
Cyprian's theories; and now Constantine made the Church an alter ego
of the State, and gave it a concrete unity of the political sort which it
never had before. Henceforth the holy Catholic Church of the creeds was
more and more limited to the confederation of churches recognised by
the State, so that it only remained to compel all men to come into these,
and prevent the formation of any other religious communities. In this
way
the Church became much more useful to the State, and also perhaps
fitter to resist the shock of the barbarian conquests which followed; but
success.
## p. 15 (#45) ##############################################
315–326]
Crispus and Fausta
15
surely something was lost in freedom and spirituality, and therefore also
in practical morality.
We
pass
from the Council of Nicaea to a family tragedy. So far
Constantine may pass as fairly merciful to the plotters of his own house.
Maximian, Bassianus and Licinius had all tried to assassinate him; and
if he put to death Bassianus (see p. 8), he had spared Maximian till he
plotted again, and so far he had spared Licinius also. But now in a few
months from Oct. 325 he puts to death not only Licinius but his own son
Crispus and the younger Licinius, then his own wife Fausta, and then a
number of his friends. The facts are certain, but their exact meaning is
obscure. It must however be noticed that the dynastic policy of Diocletian
had given a new political importance to members of an imperial family.
The widows of the third century emperors fall into obscurity ; but the
widow of Galerius is first sought in marriage by Maximin Daza, then
executed by Licinius, who also put to death the children of Severus,
Daza and Galerius. Now Constantine married twice; and there may
well have been a bitter division in his family. Minervina was the
mother of Crispus, whom we have seen greatly distinguishing himself
in the war with Licinius : and there seems no serious doubt that the
three younger sons were children of Fausta, though the eldest of them
was not born till 315-6, eight years after her marriage. So we come to
the questions we cannot answer. Was Constantine jealous of his eldest
son, or anxious to get him out of the way of the others ? Or was Crispus
a plotter justly put to death? And how came Fausta to share his fate
a little later? They are not likely to have been accomplices in a plot
or connected by a guilty passion, though the story of Zosimus is not
impossible, that she accused him falsely, and was herself put to death
for it when Helena convicted her. We have not material enough for
any decided opinion. The worst point, it may be, against Constantine
is that he did not spare the young Licinius. If he was the son of
Constantia, he cannot have been more than twelve years old. But the
allusions to him suggest that he was something more than a boy, and
we know that Constantia was on the best of terms with her brother
when she died a couple of years later. If Constantine suspected the
elder Licinius, the new sultanism would involve the younger in his fate ;
and if Crispus had married Helena his daughter, suspicion might attach
to him too. Fausta's fate is the inystery. Or was Constantine more or
less out of his mind that winter, as despots occasionally are? One or
two of his laws may point that way, and the possibility may help to
explain a good deal.
Constantine kept his Vicennalia at Rome in the summer of 326. It
was an unhappy visit, even if the domestic tragedy had already taken
place. Rome was the focus of heathenism, and of Roman pride. She
expected to see her sovereigns at the ceremonies, and to treat them with
something of republican familiarity. Constantine scandalised her with
1
.
重
1
H
CH. I,
## p. 16 (#46) ##############################################
16
The site of Constantinople
[326
his Eastern pomp, and gave deep offence to the senate and people by
refusing to join the immemorial procession of the knights of Rome to
the Capitol. When he left the city in September, he left it for ever.
Rome indeed had long ceased to be a good capital. It was too far
from the frontier for military purposes, too full of republican survivals
for such sultans as the emperors had now become, too heathen for
Christian Caesars. So Maximian held his court at Milan, while Dio-
cletian gradually shifted his chief resort eastward from Sirmium to
Nicomedia. There were many signs now that the seat of empire ought
to be somewhere near the Bosphorus. The chief dangers had always
come from the Danube and the Euphrates; and about the Bosphorus
was the only point which commanded both. If these were watched by
the emperor himself, the Rhine might be left in charge of a Caesar.
This was much the best course for the present; but in the long run the
problem was insoluble. The Rhine and the Danube might be guarded,
or the Danube and the Euphrates ; but now that Rome had failed to
make a solid nation of her empire, she could not permanently guard all
three together. Sooner or later it must come to a choice between the
Rhine and the Euphrates, between Italy and Greece, between Europe
and Asia. Constantine is not likely to have seen clearly all this ; but
he did see that he commanded more important countries from the
Bosphorus than he could from Rome or Milan. These might control the
Latin West and the upper Danube ; but at the Bosphorus he had at
his feet the Greek world from Taurus to the Balkans, flanked northward
by the warlike peoples of Illyricum, and eastward by the great barbarian
fringe of Egypt, Syria and Armenia, reaching from the Caucasus to the
cataracts of the Nile. Nobody could yet foresee that by the seventh
century nothing but the Greek world would be left. But where pre-
cisely was the new capital to be placed ? Nicomedia would have been
Diocletian's city, not Constantine's, and in any case it lay at the far end
of a gulf, some fifty miles from the main line of traffic. Constantine
may at one time have dreamed of his own birthplace Naissus, or of
Sardica, and at another he began buildings on the site of Troy, before
he fixed upon the matchless position of Byzantium,
Europe and Asia are separated by the broad expanses of the Euxine
and Aegean seas, together stretching nearly a thousand miles from the
Crimea to the mountains of Crete, and in ancient times almost fringed
round with Greek cities. It is not all a land of the vine and the olive,
even in Aegean waters, for the Russian wind sweeps over the whole
region except in sheltered parts, as where Trebizond is protected by the
Caucasus, Philippi by the Rhodope, or Sparta by Taygetus, or where
Ionia hides behind the Mysian Olympus and the Trojan Ida. For all
its heat in summer, Constantinople is quite as cold in winter as London,
and the western ports of the Black Sea are more cumbered with ice than
the north of Norway. But the Aegean and the Euxine are not a single
## p. 17 (#47) ##############################################
B. C. 674-A. D. 323]
Byzantium
17
a
broad sheet of water. In the narrows between them the coasts of
Europe and Asia draw so close together that we can sail for more than
two hundred miles in full view of both continents. Leaving the warm
South behind at Lesbos (Mitylene) we pass from the Aegean to the
Propontis (Marmora) by the Hellespont (Dardanelles) a channel of
some fifty miles in length to Gallipoli, and two or three miles broad.
Then a voyage of a hundred and forty miles through the more open
waters of the Propontis brings us to the Bosphorus, which averages only
three-quarters of a mile wide, and has a winding course of sixteen miles
from Byzantium to the Cyanean rocks at the entrance of the Euxine.
It follows that a city on the Propontis is protected north and south by
the narrow passages of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and that all
traffic between the Aegean and the Euxine must pass its walls. More-
over, the Bosphorus lay more conveniently than the Dardanelles for the
passage from Europe to Asia. Thus two of the chief trade-routes of the
Roman world crossed each other at Byzantium.
The Megarians may have had some idea of these things when they
colonised Chalcedon (B. C. 674) just outside the south end of the Bosphorus,
on the Asiatic side of the Propontis. But the site of Chalcedon has no
special advantages, so that its founders became a proverb of blindness for
overlooking the superb position of Byzantium across the water, which was
not occupied till B. c. 657. At the south end of the Bosphorus, but on
the European side, a blunt triangle is formed by the Propontis and the
Golden Horn, a deep inlet of the Bosphorus running seven miles to the
north-west. On the rising ground between them was built the city of
Byzantium. Small as its extent was in Greek times, it played a great
part in history. Its command of the corn trade of the Euxine made it
one of the most important strategic positions in the Greek world, so
that its capture by Alexander (it had repulsed Philip) was one of the
chief steps of his advance to empire. It formed an early alliance with
the Romans, who freed it from its perpetual trouble with the barbarians
of Thrace, whom neither peace nor war could keep quiet. Vespasian
(A. D. 73) took away its privileges and threw it into the province of
Thrace. In the civil wars of Septimius Severus it took the side of
Pescennius Niger, and held out for two years after Niger's overthrow at
Issus in 194. Severus destroyed its walls, and made it a subject-village
of Perinthus. Caracalla made it a city again, but it was sacked afresh
by Gallienus. Meanwhile the Gothic vikings came sailing past its ruined
walls to spread terror all over the Aegean and to the shores of Italy.
Under the Ilyrian emperors it was fortified again. Even then it was
taken first by Maximin Daza and then by Constantine in the first Licinian
war, so that its full significance only came out in the second. Licinius
was a good general, and pivoted the whole war upon it after his defeat at
Hadrianople. He might have held his ground indefinitely, if the destruc-
tion of his fleet in the Hellespont had not driven him from Byzantium.
2
C. MED. H. VOL. I. CH. I.
## p. 18 (#48) ##############################################
18
Constantinople
[ 330-1204
The lesson was not lost on Constantine. He began the work some
time after his visit to Rome, and pushed it forward with impatience,
He traced his walls to form a base two and a half miles from the apex
of the triangle. Byzantium stood on a single hill, but he took in five,
and his successors counted seven, according to the number of the hills of
Rome. The market-place was on the second hill, where his camp had
been during the siege. He erected great buildings, and gathered works
of art from all parts to adorn it. The temples of Byzantium remained,
though they were overshadowed by the great cathedral of the Twelve
Apostles. Some heathen ceremonies also were used, for Constantinople
was the last and greatest colony of Rome, and for centuries retained the
flavour of a Latin city. He gave it a senate also, and brought over
many
of the senators of Rome to be senators of the New Rome-for such
was its official title, though it has always been known as the City of
Constantine. The Northmen called it simply Miklagard, the Great
City. It never had much in the way of amphitheatre or beast-fights:
amusement more Christian and humane was provided by a circus and
horse-races. Its corn largesses were like those of Rome, and the corn of
Egypt was diverted to its use, leaving that of Sicily and Africa for Rome.
The New Rome stood next to the Old in rank and dignity, being
separated from the province of Europa, and governed by proconsuls till
it received a Praefectus Urbi like Rome in 359. The bishop also soon
shook off his dependence on Perinthus, and was recognised as standing
next to the bishop of Rome, “ because Constantinople is New Rome," by
the Council of 381. This ousted Alexandria from the second place, and
the jealousy thereupon arising had important ecclesiastical consequences,
The work was complete, so far as the hasty building would allow, by
the spring of 330: and 11 May of that year is the official date for
the foundation of Constantinople.
It would be hard to overestimate the strength given to the Empire
by the new capital. So long as the Romans held the sea, the city was
impregnable. If it was attacked on one side, it could draw supplies
from the other; and when it was attacked on both sides in 628, Persians
and Avars could not join hands across the Bosphorus. Even when the
command of the sea was lost, it still remained a fortress of uncommon
strength. So stood Constantinople for more than a thousand years.
Goths and Avars, Persians and Saracens, Bulgarians and Russians,
dashed in vain upon its walls, and even the Turks failed more than
It was often enough taken in civil war by help from within ;
but no foreign enemy ever stormed its walls till the Fourth Crusade
(A. D. 1204). The Arian controversy first made it clear that the heart
of the Empire was in the Greek world, or more precisely in Asiatic
Greece between the Taurus and the Bosphorus; and of the Greek world
Constantinople was the natural capital. It did not however at once
1 The city will be described in Vol. iv. Ch. xx.
once.
## p. 19 (#49) ##############################################
331–1281]
The Gothic War
19
become the regular residence of the emperors. Constantine himself
died in a suburb of Nicomedia, Constantius led a wandering life, Jovian
never reached the city, and Valens in his later years avoided it. Theo-
dosius was the first emperor who made it his usual residence. But the
commercial supremacy of Constantinople was assured from the outset.
The centre of gravity of Asia Minor had shifted northward since the
first century, and the Bosphorus gave an easier passage to Europe than
the Aegean. So the roads which had converged on Ephesus now con-
verged on Constantinople. It dominated the Greek world; and the
Greek world was the solid part of the Empire which resisted all attacks
for ages. The loss was more apparent than real when first the Slavic
lands were torn away, then Syria and Egypt, and lastly Sicily and Italy.
The Empire was never struck in a vital part till the Seljuks rooted out
Greek civilisation from the highland of Asia Minor in the eleventh
century. Even after that it was still a conquering power under the
Comnenians and the house of Lascaris; and its fate was never hopeless
till its last firm ground in Asia was destroyed by the corrupt and selfish
policy of Michael Palaeologus.
We know little of Constantine's declining years, except that they
were generally years of peace. The civil wars were ended at Chrysopolis :
now there was not even a pretender, unless we count as such Calocerus
the camel-driver in Cyprus, who was put down without much difficulty,
and duly burned in the market-place of Tarsus (335). If the Rhine was
not entirely quiet, the troubles there were not serious. The Jews, to be
sure, were never loyal, and the Christian Empire had already shown
marked hostility to them. A rising mentioned only by Chrysostom is
most likely a legend: but there may have been already some signs of
the great outbreak put down by Ursicinus in 352. However, upon the
whole there was peace. The old emperor never again took the field in
person.
His last war was with the Goths; and that was conducted by
the younger Constantine.
On
broad view, the legions of the Danube faced the Germans in
course and the Goths lower down, with the Sarmatians between
them; and each of these names stands for sundry tribes and groups of
tribes
, whose mutual enmities were diligently fostered by the policy of
Rome. In 331 the Sarmatians and the Vandals had somehow got mixed
up together, and suffered a great defeat from the Goths. They asked
Constantine for help, and he was very willing to check the growth of the
Gothic power. Araric the Gothic king replied by carrying the war into
the Roman province of Moesia, from which he was driven out with
heavy loss. The younger Constantine gained a great victory over him,
20 April 332 ; and when peace was made, the Goths returned to their
position as servants and allies of Rome. But when the Sarmatians
themselves made inroads on Roman territory, Constantine left them to
They were soon in difficulties with Geberic the new Gothic
a
its
upper
old
their fate.
CH, I.
242
## p. 20 (#50) ##############################################
20
The last years of Constantine
[284–988
king, and with their own slaves the Limigantes, who drove them out of
their country. Some fled to the Quadi, some found refuge among the
Gothic tribes, but 300,000 of them sought shelter in the Empire, and
were given lands by Constantine, chiefly in Pannonia.
The most interesting circumstance of the Gothic war is the help
which Constantine received from Cherson, the last of the Greek re-
publics. It stood where Sebastopol now stands. The story is told only
by Constantine Porphyrogenitus (911-959), but the learned emperor
was an excellent antiquarian, and used original authorities. Cherson
and the Goths were old enemies, Rome and Cherson old allies. The
republic decided for war, and its first magistrate Diogenes struck a
decisive blow by attacking the rear of the Goths. Cherson received
a rich reward from Constantine, and remained in generally friendly
relations to the Empire till its annexation in 829, and even till its
capture by the Russians in 988.
The settlement of the Danube was the last of Constantine's great
services to the Empire. The Edict of Milan had removed the standing
danger of Christian disaffection in the East, the defeat of Licinius had
put an end to the civil wars, the reform of the administration completed
Diocletian's work of reducing the army to permanent obedience, the
Council of Nicaea had secured the active alliance of the Christian
churches, the foundation of Constantinople made the seat of power
safe for centuries; and now the consolidation of the northern frontier
seemed to enlist all the most dangerous enemies of Rome in her defence.
The Empire gained three hundred thousand settlers for the wastes of
the Gothic march, and a firm peace of more than thirty years with the
greatest of the northern nations. Henceforth the Rhine was guarded
by the Franks, the Danube covered by the Goths, and the Euphrates
flanked by the Christian kingdom of Armenia. The Empire was already
dangerously dependent on barbarian help inside and outside its frontiers ;
but the Roman peace never seemed more secure than when the skilful
policy of Constantine had formed its chief barbarian enemies into a
covering ring of friendly client states.
At all events, the years of peace were not a time of healthful
recovery. The Empire had not gained strength in the long peace of
the Antonines ; and it had gone a long way downhill since the second
century. When Diocletian came to the throne in 284, he found three
great problems before him. The first was military-how to stop the
continual mutinies which cut off the emperors before they could do their
work. This he solved, though at the cost of leaving behind him a period
of civil war. The second was religious—how to deal with the Christians.
Diocletian went wrong on this, and left his mistake to be repaired by
Constantine. The third and hardest was mainly economic-to restore
the dwindled agriculture, commerce and population of the Empire. On
this Diocletian and Constantine went wrong together. They not only
## p. 21 (#51) ##############################################
325–337]
The later years of Constantine
21
failed to cure the evil, but greatly increased it. Not much was gained
by remitting taxes that could not be paid, and settling barbarian
colonists and barbarian serfs in the wasted provinces. Serious economic
difficulties have moral causes, and there was no radical cure short of a
complete change in the temper of society. Yet much might have been
done by a permanent reduction of taxation and a reform of its incidence
and of the methods of collection. Instead of this, the machinery of
government (and its expense) was greatly increased. The army had to
be held in check by courts of Oriental splendour and a vast establish-
ment of corrupt officials. We can see the growth of officialism even in the
language, if we compare the Latin words in Athanasius with those in the
New Testament. So heavier taxes had to be levied from a smaller and
poorer population. Taxation under the Empire had never been light; in
the third century it grew heavy, under Diocletian it was crushing, and
in the later years of Constantine the burden was further increased by the
enormous expenditure which built up the new capital like the city in a
fairy tale. We are within sight of the time when the whole policy of
the government was dictated by dire financial need. We have already
reached a state of things like that we see in Russia. The strongest of
the emperors had never been able to put down brigandage; and now
disorder was rampant in the mountains, and often elsewhere. The great
army of officials was all-powerful for oppression, and very little con-
trolled by the emperor. He might displace an official at a moment's
notice, or “deliver him to the avenging flames”; but he could enforce
no reform against the passive resistance of the officials and the land-
So things drifted on from bad to worse.
Nor can we doubt that Constantine himself
grew
slacker in the
years
of peace. Nature had richly gifted him with sound health, strong
limbs, and a stately presence. His energy was untiring, his observation
keen, his decision quick. He was a splendid soldier, and the best general
since Aurelian. If he had no learned education, he was not without
interest in literature, and in practical statesmanship he may fairly rank
with Diocletian. His general humanity stands out clear in his laws, for
no emperor ever did more for the slave, the foundling and the oppressed.
If he began by giving the Frankish kings to the beasts, he went on (325)
to forbid the games of the amphitheatre. In private life he was chaste
and sober, moderate and pleasant. Yet he was given to raillery, and
his nearest friends could not entirely trust him. His ambition was
great, and he was very susceptible to flattery. So freely was it
ministered to him that he sometimes had to check it himself: but
in his later years he was more or less influenced by unworthy favourites,
as Ablabius and Sopater seem to have been. No doubt his Christianity
is of itself an offence to Zosimus and Julian, so that we may discount
their charges of sloth and luxury: but upon the whole, the judgment of
Eutropius would seem impartial, that Constantine was a match for the
owners.
CH. I.
## p. 22 (#52) ##############################################
22 Constantine's disposition of the Empire [217–380
best emperors in the early part of his reign, and at its end no more than
average.
As Constantine had won the Empire, so now he had to dispose of it.
Constantine, Constantius and Constans, his three sons by Fausta, were
born in 316, 317, 320, and received the title of Caesar in 317, 323, 333.
In 335 their inheritance was marked out. Constantine was to have the
Gaulish prefecture, Constantius the Eastern, Constans the Italian and
Illyrian. This is the partition actually made after the emperor's death ;
but for the present it was complicated by some obscure transactions.
Constantine had made honourable provision for his half-brothers Del-
matius and Julius Constantius, the sons of Theodora, and they never
gave him political trouble. Of their sisters, he married Constantia to
Licinius, Anastasia to Bassianus and Nepotianus, of whom the second
certainly was a great Roman noble, so that they too suffered no dis-
paragement. Basilina also, the wife of Julius Constantius and mother
of the emperor Julian, belonged to the great Anician family. Now
Delmatius left two sons, Delmatius and Hanniballianus. Of these
Delmatius must have been a man of mark, for he held the high office
of magister militum, and was made Caesar in 335, while Hanniballianus
was the husband of Constantine's daughter Constantina. But they had
no proper claim to any share in the succession, and we do not know why
they were given it. There may have been parties in the palace; and if
so, Ablabius is likely to have had a share in the matter, for he was put
to death along with them in the massacre which followed Constantine's
death. Certain it is that shares were carved out for them from the
inheritance of their cousins. Delmatius was to have the Gothic march,
while Hanniballianus received Pontus, with the astonishing title of
rex regum—for no Roman since the Tarquins had ever borne the name
of king.
The strange title may point to some design upon Armenia, for the
whole Eastern Question of the day was raised when Persia threatened
war. Four emperors in the third century had met with disaster on the
Persian frontier, but there had been forty years of peace since the victory
of Galerius in 297. The Empire gained Mesopotamia to the Aboras,
and the five provinces which covered the southern slopes of the Armenian
mountains; and in Armenia itself, Roman supremacy was fully recog-
nised by its great king Tiridates (287–314). If his adoption of
Christianity led to a short war with Maximin Daza, it only drew
Armenia closer to Constantine. But if the royal house was Christian
and leaned on Rome, there was a large heathen party which looked to
Persia : and Persia was an aggressive power under Sapor II (309_380).
A vigorous persecution of Christians was carried on, and war with Rome
was only a question of time. Sapor demanded back the five provinces
and attacked Mesopotamia, while a revolution in the palace threw
Armenia into his hands.
## p. 23 (#53) ##############################################
337]
Death of Constantine
23
How much of this was done during Constantine's lifetime is more
than we can say: but at all events a Persian war was plain in sight by
the spring of 337; and a war with Persia was too serious a matter to be
left to Caesars like a Frankish foray or a Gothic inroad, so the old
emperor prepared to take the field in person. He never set out. Con-
stantine fell sick soon after Easter, and when the sickness grew upon
him, he took up his abode at Ancyrona, a suburb of Nicomedia. As
his end drew near, he received the imposition of hands, for up to that
time he had not been even a catechumen. He then applied for baptism,
explaining that he had hoped some day to receive it in the waters of the
Jordan like the Lord himself. After the ceremony he laid aside the
purple, and passed away in stainless white (22 May 337). As all his
sons were absent, the government was carried on for three months in the
dead emperor's name, till they had made their arrangements, and the
soldiers had slaughtered almost the entire house of Theodora. Con-
stantine was buried on the spot he had himself marked out in the
cathedral of the Twelve Apostles in his own imperial city. The Greek
Church still calls him loanótolosan equal of the Apostles.
CH. I.
## p. 24 (#54) ##############################################
24
CHAPTER II.
THE REORGANISATION OF THE EMPIRE.
It is natural to think of Diocletian as the projector and of Constantine
as the completer of a new system of government for the Roman Empire,
which persisted with mere changes of detail until it was laid in ruins by
the barbarians. But in reality the imperial institutions from the time of
Augustus onwards had passed through a course of continuous develop-
ment. Diocletian did but accelerate processes which had been in
operation from the Empire's earliest days, and Constantine left much
for his successors to accomplish. Still these two great organisers did so
far change the world which they ruled as to be rightly styled the founders
of a new type of monarchy. We will first sketch rapidly the most striking
aspects of this altered world, and then consider them one by one some-
what more closely. But our survey must be in the main of a general
character, and many details, especially when open to doubt, must be
passed over. In particular, the minutiae of chronology, which in this
region of history are specially difficult to determine, must often be
disregarded.
The ideal of a balance of power between the Princeps and the Senate,
which Augustus dangled before the eyes of his contemporaries, was never
approached in practice. From the first the imperial constitution bore
within it the seed of autocracy, and the plant was not of slow growth.
The historian Tacitus was not far wrong when he described Augustus as
having drawn to himself all the functions which in the Republic had
belonged to magistrates and to laws. The founder of the Empire had
studied well the art of concealing his political art, but the pressure of his
hand was felt in every corner of the administration. Each princeps was
as far above law as he chose to rise, so long as he did not strain the
endurance of the Senate and people to the point of breaking. When
that point was passed there was the poor consolation of refusing him his
apotheosis, or of branding with infamy his memory. As the possibility
of imperial interference was ever present in every section of the vast
machine of government, all concerned in its working were anxious to
secure themselves by obtaining an order from above. This anxiety is
conspicuous in the letters written by Pliny to his master Trajan. Even
## p. 25 (#55) ##############################################
The tendency to Despotism
25
those emperors who were most citizen-like (civiles as the phrase went)
were carried away by the tide. Tacitus exhibits the Senate as eagerly
pressing Tiberius to permit the enlargement of his powers—Tiberius
who regarded every precept of Augustus as a law for himself. The
so-called lex regia Vespasiani shews how constantly the admitted
authority of the emperor advanced by the accumulation of precedents.
Pliny gave Trajan credit for having reconciled the Empire with “liberty”;
but “liberty” had come to mean little more than orderly and benevolent
administration, free from cruel caprice, with some external deference paid
to the Senate. Developed custom made the rule of Marcus Aurelius
greatly more despotic than that of Augustus. Even the emperors of the
third century who, like Severus Alexander, made most of the Senate,
could not turn back the current. It was long, however, before the subjects
of the Empire realised that the ancient glory had departed. Down to
the time of the Emperor Tacitus pretenders found their account in posing
as senatorial champions, and rulers used the Senate's name as a con-
venient screen for their crimes. But the natural outcome of the anarchy
of the third century was the unveiled despotism of Diocletian. He was the
last in a line of valiant soldiers sprung from Illyrian soil, who accomplished
the rescue of Rome from the dissolution with which it had been threatened
by forces without and by forces within. To him more than to Aurelian,
on whom it was bestowed, belonged by right the title “restorer of the
world. ” For three centuries the legions had been a standing menace to
the very existence of Graeco-Roman civilisation. They made emperors
and unmade them, and devoured the substance of the State, exacting
continually lavish largess at the sword's point. One hope of Diocletian
when, following in the steps of Aurelian, he hedged round the throne with
pomp and majesty, was that a new awe might shield the civil power
from the lawless soldiery. In place of an Augustus, loving to parade as
a bourgeois leader of the people, there comes a kind of Sultan, with
trappings such as the men of the West had been used to associate with
the servile East, with the Persians and Parthians. The ruler of the
Roman world wears the oriental diadem, the mere dread of which had
brought Caesar to his end. He is approached as a living god with that
adoration from which the souls of the Greeks revolted when they came
into the presence of the Great King, though Alexander bent them to
endure it. Eunuchs are among his greatest officers. Lawyers buttress
his throne with an absolutist theory of the constitution which is
universally accepted.
From Augustus to Diocletian the trend of the government towards
centralisation had been incessant. The new monarchy gave to the
centralisation an intensity and an elaboration unknown before. In the
early days of conquest, whether within Italy or beyond its boundaries,
the Roman power had attempted no unification of its dominions. As
rulers, the Romans had shewn themselves thorough opportunists. They
CH. II.
## p. 26 (#56) ##############################################
26
The growth of Centrulisation
tolerated great varieties of local privilege and partial liberty. Their
government had followed, almost timidly, the line of least resistance, and
had adapted itself to circumstance, to usage, and to prejudice in every
part of the Empire. Even taxation had been elastic. Before the
age
of
despotism, few matters had ever been regulated by one unvarying
enactment for every province. To this great policy the Romans chiefly
owed the rapidity of their successes and the security of their ascendency.
The tendency towards unity was of course manifest from the first. But
it sprang far less from the direct action of the central government than
from the instinctive and unparalleled attraction which the Roman institu-
tions possessed for the provincials, particularly in the West. In part by
the extension of Roman and Italian rights to the provinces, in part
by the gradual depression of Italy to the level of a province, and in part
by interference designed to correct misgovernment, local differences were
to a great extent effaced. Septimius Severus by stationing a legion in
Italy removed one chief distinction between that favoured land and the
subject regions outside. Under his successor, Caracalla, all communities
within the Empire became alike Roman. By Diocletian and by Con-
stantine, control from the centre was made systematic and organic. Yet
absolute uniformity was not attained. In taxation, in legal administra-
tion, and in some other departments of government, local conditions
still induced some toleration of diversities.
Centralisation brought into existence with its growth a vast bureau-
cracy. The organisation of the Imperial side of the administration, as
opposed to the Senatorial, became more and more complex, while the
importance of the Senate in the administrative machinery continually
lessened. The expansion and organisation of the executive engaged the
attention of many emperors, particularly Claudius, Vespasian, Trajan,
Hadrian, and Septimius Severus. When the chaos of the third century
had been overcome, Diocletian and his successors were compelled to
reconstruct the whole service of the Empire, and a great network of
officials, bearing for the most part new titles and largely undertaking
new functions, was spread over it.
Along with the development of absolutism and the extension of
bureaucracy, and the unification of administration had gone certain
tendencies which had cut deeply into the constitution of society at large.
The boundaries between class and class tended more and more to become
fixed and impassable. As the Empire decayed society stiffened, and some
approximations were made to the oriental institution of caste. Augustus
had tried to give a rigid organisation to the circle from which senators
were drawn, and had constituted it as an order of nobility passing down
from father to son, only to be slowly recruited by imperial choice.
Many duties owed to the State tended to become hereditary, and it was
made difficult for men to rid themselves of the status which they acquired
at birth. The exigencies of finance made membership of the local
## p. 27 (#57) ##############################################
The new form of the Executive Government
27
a
senates in the municipalities almost impossible to escape. The frontier
legions, partly by encouragement and partly by ordinance, were largely
filled with sons of the camp. Several causes, the chief of which was the
financial system, gave rise to a kind of serfdom (colonatus) which at first
attached the cultivators of the soil, and as time went on, approximated
to a condition of actual slavery. The provisioning of the great capitals,
Rome and Constantinople, and the transportation of goods on public
account, rendered occupations connected with them hereditary. And
many inequalities between classes became pronounced. The criminal
law placed the honestiores and the tenuiores in different categories.
The main features of the executive government as organised by
Diocletian and his successors, must now be briefly described. For the
first time the difference between the prevalently Latin West and the pre-
valently Greek East was clearly reflected in the scheme of administration.
Diocletian ordained (286) that two Augusti with equal authority should
share the supreme power, one making his residence in the Eastern, the
other in the Western portion. The Empire was not formally divided
between them; they were to work together for the benefit of the whole
State. This association of Augusti was not exactly new; but it had
never been before formalised so completely. The separation of West
from East had been foreshadowed from the early days of the Empire.
In the first century it had been found necessary to have a Greek
Secretary of State (a libellis Graecis) as well as a Latin Secretary (a
libellis Latinis). The civilisation of the two spheres, in spite of much
interaction, remained markedly different. The municipal life of the
Eastern regions in which Greek influence predominated was fixed in its
characteristics before the Romans acquired their ascendency, and the
impression they made on it was not on the whole great. But they
spread their own municipal institutions all over Western lands.
Although Diocletian's arrangement of the two Augusti was
thrown by Constantine, the inherent incompatibility between the two
sections of the Empire continued to assert itself, and the separation
became permanent in fact if not in form on the death of Theodosius.
The establishment of Constantinople as the capital rendered the ultimate
severance inevitable. Another problem which Diocletian attacked was
that of the succession to the throne. Each “ Augustus " was to have
assigned to him (293) a “Caesar” who would assist him in the task of
government and succeed him on his retirement or death. The trans-
ference of power would thus be peaceful and the violent revolutions caused
by the claims of the legions to nominate emperors would cease. But in the
nature of things this device could not prosper. The Empire followed the
course it had taken from the beginning. The dynastic principle strove
time after time to establish itself, but dynasties were ever threatened with
catastrophe, such as had ensued on the deaths of Nero, of Commodus,
and of Severus Alexander. But new emperors frequently did homage to
over-
CH. 11.
## p. 28 (#58) ##############################################
28
Personal authority of the Emperor
9
29
heredity by a process of posthumous and fictitious adoption, whereby
they grafted themselves on to the line of their predecessors. Apparently
even this phantom of legitimacy had some value for the effect it produced
on the public mind.
The theory of government now became, as has been said, frankly
autocratic. Even Aurelian, a man of simple and soldierly life, had
thought well to take to himself officially the title of " lord and god”
which private flattery had bestowed upon Domitian. The lawyers
established a fiction that the Roman people had voluntarily resigned
all authority into the hands of the monarch. The fable was as baseless
and as serviceable as that of the “social compact,” received in the
eighteenth century. No person or class held any rights against the
emperor. The revenues were his private property. All payments from
the treasury were “sacred largesses” conceded by the divine ruler. So
far as the State was concerned, the distinction between the senatorial
exchequer (aerarium) and the imperial exchequer (fiscus) disappeared.
Certain revenues, as for instance those derived from the confiscated
estates of unsuccessful pretenders, were labelled as the emperor's private
property (res privata), and others as belonging to his “family estate
(patrimonium). But these designations were merely formal and ad-
ministrative. The emperor was the sole ultimate source of all law and
authority. The personnel by which he was immediately surrounded in
his capital was of vast extent, and the palace was often a hotbed of
intrigue. Even in the time of the Severi the “Caesareans ” (Kawoápeloi)
as Dio Cassius names them, were numerous enough to imperil often the
public peace. Another class of imperial servants, the workers at the
mint, had, in the reign of Aurelian, raised an insurrection which led to a
shedding of blood in Rome such as had not been witnessed since the age
of Sulla. The military basis of imperial power, partly concealed by the
earlier emperors, stood fully revealed. Septimius Severus had been the
first to wear regularly in the capital the full insignia of military
command, previously seen there only on days of triumph. Now every
department of the public service was regarded as “militia,” and “ camp
(castra) is the official name for the court. All high officers, with the
exception of the praefectus urbi, wore the military garb. It is needless
to say that officials who were nominally the emperor's domestic servants
easily gathered power into their own hands and often became the real
rulers of the Empire. The line between domestic offices and those which
were political and military was never strictly drawn. All higher functions
whose exercise required close attention on the emperor's person were
covered by the description dignitates palatinae. Under the early
emperors the great ministers of state were largely freedmen, whose
status was rather that of court servants than of public administrators.
The great departments of the imperial service were gradually freed from
their close attachment to the emperor's person. The natural result was
## p. 29 (#59) ##############################################
Officers attached to the Emperor's person
29
that direct personal influence over the ruler often passed into the hands
of men whose duties were in name connected only with the daily life of
the palace. From the third century onwards the Eastern custom of
choosing eunuchs as the most trusted servants prevailed in the imperial
household as in the private households of the wealthy. The greatest of
these was the praepositus sacri cubiculi. or Great Chamberlain.
